Playing Tragic
by Erik's Champion
Summary: A series of dreams, breakdowns, and breakthroughs that shape the lives of our beloved YGO characters. Ch 8: That volcanic, violet voice. Seto remembered that, too. That voice circulated and screamed through his bloodstream. SKxYY
1. 1 2 3 4 Seto, Mokuba

The basic idea I had when creating this series was to make a place to stick all my story ideas that were either too short or too underdeveloped to stand alone, each inspired by a specific song. I more or less stole this idea from the superbly talented Scribbler, and her collection _As Deep as the Sky_, though I made the premise significantly easier for myself by choosing the song in advance and not giving myself a time limit on getting the story down. I own nothing.

* * *

Feist- 1 2 3 4

* * *

If his better judgment hadn't emphatically told him otherwise, he wouldn't have believed that there was a distinction between ground and sky. Equally eternal and pale, the two seemed to swirl and shimmer together, forming an irrevocable union between the flat and solid and eerily intangible.

And snowflakes, those were a mystery in on themselves. He couldn't see the individual flakes fall, they were too dainty and delicate to distinguish clearly, but with every passing moment he could see the deceptively heavy mounds on his shoulders climbing, sticking to his heavy coat and resisting every attempt he made to brush them off.

He could see Mokuba, or rather, feel him—like a warm vein of unadulterated syrupy sugar that leeched through the icy and empty gulf between them. Just watching him practically bounce down the sidewalk, desperately trying to contain his excitement, Seto felt unbearably old. Here he was, buried in scarves, floor-length jackets, thick leather gloves, anything to keep the cold at bay, while beside him, mere feet away, it was if Mokuba didn't even notice the cold. Didn't feel it. His cheeks were flushed, eyes shining like spots of stars in the night sky, but he smiled, as if wading through deathly-cold torrents of wind and miniature mountains of snow was the best and most exhilarating way he could ever think of to spend his time.

Which, Seto supposed, it was. After all, he had asked to go. It had been a dignified, straight-backed, looking you unabashedly right in the eye kind of request, but Seto hadn't failed to notice the fireworks that went off in his eyes when he had complied.

And so here they were, making their way through the largely empty and snow-saturated streets like a couple of misguided pilgrims on their own secret and sacred mission—on their way to the apex of everything large, loud, and utterly childish that he could possibly imagine. He could only cringe at the thought of masses of unruly children, hopped up on sugar and a shocking paucity of parental supervision, falling all over themselves on the ice and pushing the little ones around. And to think that Mokuba wanted to plunge himself into _that_, that festering mob of chaos; when he made the suggestion Seto had just barely kept himself from turning his brother over to some kind of neurological specialist.

"Are you _sure_ you want to do this, Mokuba?" The words pushed themselves out before he had had time to stop them; it hadn't been his intention to verbally question Mokuba's decision. But it seemed that with each step they took they came that much closer to not being able to turn back before it was too late, and his anxiety was mounting.

"I'm positive, Seto. Trust me, it's going to be _great_." Seto smiled weakly when he saw that there had been no need for Mokuba to speak, the steadfastness in the nod of his head, the balling of his fists, and hard, strong steps had all the resolution of a clock striking out the hour. There was clearly no deterring him now. Seto sighed, a faint hum of resignation, and pulled his scarf tighter around his neck.

He watched as Mokuba didn't walk, but skipped through the continually amounting heaps of snow, reveling in the deep, definitive crunch that his boots made as they sunk into the crumbling crystalline piles that littered the streets like discarded newspapers. Seto brushed the snow from his hair, but that didn't stop it from falling.

They heard the ice skating rink before they saw it. A cheery blend of laughter and pop music illuminated the usually quiet afternoon air like a lone light left on in a dark, empty room. Once his target was in sight, Mokuba bulleted towards the entrance, pelted across the street and— scarcely checking for oncoming cars—disappeared through the entrance. As Seto followed him through the steamy double doors, he could see that his boots, as cumbersome as they were, had hardly left footprints. It was as if his feet had scarcely touched the ground.

The small sliver of space around the perimeter of the rink was packed tight with people, all glowing like dozens of tiny lights as they giggled over steamy mugs of hot chocolate or laced their boots. In the few second gap between their respective entrances, Mokuba seemed to have ingrained himself completely in the crowd, becoming a part of their collective smiles, cheers, jubilations. Seto scanned the throng tenaciously, peeling his eyes for the form that he could have recognized with his eyes closed but now, in this mob, seemed completely invisible to him. The music swarmed like a pestering insect around him, the people kept moving closer, spilling themselves all over him like the snow coating the rink, covering his clothes and his skin, and still Mokuba was nowhere to be found. It was as if he had completely disappeared.

"Hey, Kaiba, I think someone here might be looking for you." Seto spun around, shocked to see his brother in the charge of Katsuya Jonouchi, who was smiling sheepishly up at him as he handed his brother over.

"S-sorry, Seto," Mokuba stuttered, afraid to entirely meet his brother's eyes lest they melt him. He cringed slightly as Seto scrutinized him as if desperately searching for something that he couldn't find.

"Where did you get those?" Seto gestured towards the heavy, industrial looking ice skates that were gripped in Mokuba's hands, their bulk making them look immense in his delicate grasp.

"Over there." He pointed towards a booth up against the side of the wall where dozens of pairs of ice skates were dangling like skinned animals.

"Are you sure they'll fit?"

Mokuba nodded earnestly and Seto saw that same resolution reflected in his eyes, sincere and certain. "Yeah, I checked and everything." His face erupted in a cautious smile, only to have it evaporate an instant later when he saw that frown that was blossoming on Seto's.

"Whatever. Come on, then." He reached out his arm to lead Mokuba away, but he avoided it as he made his way over to a bench to lace his boots. Seto examined his arm for a moment, extending uselessly into nothing, before turning away and following him.

"Thank you, Jonouchi!" Mokuba called as he sat himself down, and for an instant Jonouchi thought that he saw something odd flicker over Seto's face, like a match that only flamed for a second before being dissolved by darkness.

Seto sat down next to Mokuba on the hard, plastic bench after brushing away more bunches of freshly-fallen snow. He watched as Mokuba eagerly laced his boots, pulling the thick, swollen strings tight with his nimble figures. "Do you need any help?" Seto wondered listlessly, not genuinely expecting a satisfactory answer.

Mokuba shook his head, his excitement building up again like a gurgling spring. "No, thanks, Seto. I'm good." He looked up at his brother's face, wavering for a moment on the shore as if he were gingerly testing uncertain waters. "Are you going to skate, too?"

"No." Seto shook his head and drew his coat tighter around his shoulders. Despite his most ardent efforts, the cold always seemed to find a way in. He kneaded his hands, desperately trying to bring warmth back to his fingertips.

Mokuba shrugged, slightly disappointed. "Well, just in case you change your mind," he handed Seto a paper ticket. "It's so you can get skates, too. If you want."

Seto nodded, delicately grasping the square of paper between his heavily gloved and numb fingers. The two stood together, Seto following Mokuba to the entrance to the skating rink. Seto watched the other children closely, flinging themselves about the ice in apparent disorder. Tumbling over, their skin and clothes coated with ice, clinging to each other to keep from falling, all grinning, their smiles wide and exuberant. Mokuba seemed to recognize someone that he knew at the far end of the rink. A small gang of boys waved at him, summoning him over.

As Mokuba took his first, tremulous steps towards the ice, Seto could no longer battle back the question that had been blooming in his mind since Mokuba had first made his request. "Mokuba, have you ever been ice skating before?"

The question hung in an awkward silence between them for a few moments, before Mokuba bit his lower lip, grinned shyly, and replied, "No, but I think that I'll be able to figure it out." He reached out, gripped Seto's hand and shook it as if they were making a business deal. Then he laughed, sweet and high and pure, a laugh like the chime of a bell, synchronizing perfectly with the already present pulse of music and chatter that floated all around them.

And before Seto could bid him farewell, as if he were to partake in some grand and momentous adventure over uncharted waters, he was gone, a tiny scrap of cloth in the swirling mass all around him. Seto leaned against the fence and swatted at the snow on his shoulders. Occasionally he would catch a definitive glimpse of Mokuba through the crowds, a little uneasy on the ice at first but a quick learner.

The more Seto watched the skaters, the more they seemed to move as one immense being, equipped with its own pulse, voice, and soul. The snow fell on them all, and they ignored it. They let it rest on their eyelashes, glisten on their hair and hands and shoes, and they wore it like a second skin. Uncaring.

The snow fell on Jonouchi, who was standing mere feet from the gate that Seto hadn't dared to stray far from, playfully grinning as he gently pushed a girl, perhaps a few years younger than himself, out onto the ice. Against the hard icy backdrop their hair glowed like freshly fallen leaves, so bright and so bold that it made Seto feel like everything around them was gray— unnaturally striped of its color. He watched as she struggled a little on the ice, stumbling for her first few steps, wavering back and forth like a candle in the wind before finding her footing and taking off like a young bird to the center of the ice, disappearing like the others into the crowd.

He watched, partially concealed behind the high collar of his coat, as Jonouchi failed to integrate into the crowd like the others. He remained present, constant, and physical as he first watched his sister take off onto the ice, and became increasingly more so as he approached Seto, cheeks as flushed and ruddy as bright red brick.

"Looks like fun, doesn't it?"

"If it _is_, then why aren't you doing it?"

"Hah, knowing me, I'd probably fall over myself in five minutes."

Seto grunted, he certainly couldn't argue with that.

"You have a card, though. Aren't you going to skate?"

"No." Seto glanced briefly down at the ticket that Mokuba had given him and smiled sourly. "It's for kid's skates, anyway. I guess Mokuba wasn't paying attention." Jonouchi nodded and turned back to the ice, watching the skaters flash by like tiny scraps of paper. "What about _her_? Aren't you _worried_ that she'll fall?"

Jonouchi shook his head and laughed, his face embossed with a wide, exuberant smile that made Seto feel like the sun had come out early. "Nah, Shizuka knows how to take care of herself." His wistful expression wavered for a moment when met with Seto's disdainful one, but thinking of his sister, with her hair flowing and skin glowing as she practically soared across the ice was a better defense against reproach than Seto's coat was against the cold. "Besides, even if she falls, so what? She knows how to get herself back up again."

Seto shook his head in silent amazement. He furiously shoved the snow off his shoulders and sighed, his words as weak as the gauzy cloud of breath that came from his mouth as he said them. "He doesn't need me anymore." He stamped at the ground. "And I can't feel my feet."

Jonouchi watched him for a few moments of barely contained amusement as Seto angrily swatted at the snow surrounding him as if it were causing him some great indignity, all the while evading his eyes and huffing haughtily at the sky.

"Y'know, Kaiba, you can thrash at it all you want, but you're not gonna be able to stop the snow from falling." Seto shot his eyes like arrows at Jonouchi's merry face—he was clearly enjoying this too much.

"Stop."

"Stop what?" He made an attempt to feign innocence, but his smile lurked like a hillside just barely discernable on a distant horizon.

"You're _laughing_ at me."

"I'm not laughing at anybody. Maybe if you did it yourself once in a while you would be able to tell the difference." Despite his words, Seto could see that he was in fact, quite clearly, laughing. And from the looks of it, he was doing a very poor job keeping himself contained. His eyes bulged from his head like a lid put on a pot that was dangerously close to boiling over and his entire ribcage shook with suppressed snickering.

"_What_ is so funny?"

"It's just—just that, have you ever even been in the snow before, Kaiba?"

"Of course I have." Despite his coolest tone, Jonouchi continued to convulse with silent laughter by his side. "_What_?"

"You—you certainly don't look like you ever have, that's all." Seto's eyes narrowed and he stiffened his back in agitation. For the next few minutes he devoted every fiber of his will to appearing as warm and untroubled as possible. However, he couldn't stop the almost involuntary flickers of his hand as it went to brush the snow away, couldn't stop himself from shivering as the cold sank into him. And Jonouchi's chuckling at him only made it worse.

Deciding it was time to take decisive action, despite every nerve in every one of his fingers telling him otherwise, Seto swiftly swept the surrounding snow into one giant, perfectly spherical globe and lobbed it as elegantly as he could directly at Jonouchi's overly smug face. He was instantly satisfied when he saw Jonouchi go reeling towards the ground, landing awkwardly on the icy earth. Seto smirked as he saw Jonouchi fumble on the slippery ground, strongly resembling a baby animal taking its first feeble steps.

"What's the matter, Jonouchi, can't _get_ yourself up?"

Jonouchi gave him the most potent glare he could muster given the circumstances, then made a desperate lunge for the most stable-looking thing in the immediate vicinity—Seto's legs, effectively sending him spiraling to the ground. "What's the matter, Kaiba," he smugly sneered as he watched Seto thrash wildly on the ice and dirt as he tried to pick himself up. "Having trouble?"

"You're impossible." Seto muttered dangerously as he tried to find solid footing.

"I'm not the one who went around throwing snowballs at people."

"_I'm_ not the one that was _laughing_ like an _idiot_."

"Hey, uh, Seto, Jonouchi, are you guys alright?" Mokuba had returned, and was looking with bewilderment at the two of them as they grappled to regain the semblance of being dignified human beings.

"No, Mokuba, I'm just _fine_," Seto muttered bitterly as he managed to drag himself back up. "I'm _afraid_ I can't say the same for this _creatur_e here." He gestured towards Jonouchi, who was at the moment just managing to rise to his feet as well. "Are you done?"

"Well, actually…it was just that I couldn't see you. I just wanted to know where you were." He smiled shyly. Without giving Seto a chance to reply, he took off again and was instantly reinitiated into his small band of friends who were still making their rounds around the rink.

"Well, there you go," Jonouchi chimed as he made it halfway through congenially slapping Seto on the shoulder before he was stopped by a dangerous glimmer in Seto's eyes that clearly said 'try that again and, so help me, I will skin you alive.' "He still needs you after all."

Seto snorted shortly as he turned pointedly away. "No one _asked_ for your opinion."

The two stood in silence, Seto silently smiling, as they watched the skaters spinning by. The more he looked, the easier it was for Seto to find Mokuba in the mob, sliding smoothly across the ice as if he had been born there. He lost track of time as they stood there, watching their siblings whirling by in some eternal chaos. And the snow kept falling.


	2. Tranquilize Gozaburo

The Killers- Tranquilize

* * *

He had always found a special appeal in tall buildings. Storming towards the sky like spear points, conquering the clouds, he had always felt that that was his proper place, at the top floor of his own glassy tower of Babel.

At night the effect was even more profound. It was like a thick black curtain had swallowed up the rest of the world, leaving behind only the faintest glimmers of distant golden lights. They shone like thousands of tiny spotlights, glowing just for him, because of him, buzzing and brimming like the thousands—perhaps millions—of souls that owed their lives or their livelihoods to his technology. Just the thought of it made him brim with pride, overflow with it like a volcano just after a climatic eruption with syrupy, vicious lava streaming down its sides.

The only downside to these tall buildings, he thought, was what it felt like to be at the top of one of them. Their overpowering silhouette was really best appreciated from a distance, where one could clearly see the full scale of the structure, especially in comparison to the rather humble surrounding buildings that comprised the remainder of the Domino City skyline. The other buildings were so low, so unassuming, that he often commented to his subordinates that, without the KaibaCorp tower rising elegantly like a redwood tree in a shrub garden, an observer would think that the Industrial Revolution had entirely bypassed their city. But embraced industrialization he had, and he had seventy stories of iron and glass to prove it.

Unfortunately, from the inside, the enormity of his achievement was invisible to him. Continually surrounded by loyal employees, buzzing computers, and piles of papers that needed his signature, he feared that he sometimes lost sight of the colossal scale of his accomplishments. Occasionally, on slow nights such as this one, he longed to see the KaibaCorp tower not as its owner, but as any other passerby who lived in its shadow, not its insides.

Deciding to rest his aching eyes from the unnatural glow of his computer screen, he stepped away from his desk and approached the vast bank of windows that comprised the far wall of his office. As he gazed out the window, figures raced through his mind as if someone was chasing them. Seventy stories equaled six months of intensive construction with hundreds of workers and three world-renown architects. It equaled tons of glass, iron, steel, thousands of feet of pipe, hundreds of yards of carpeting. It equaled millions of dollars, dozens of millionaire clients, seemingly endless shipments of weapons, and three regional conflicts that had resulted in the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of people. But that was a high estimate.

There had been protesters yesterday, waving sloppy posters and screaming obscenities. They had gathered around the perimeter of the building around nine in the morning, just as the majority of the employees were arriving. There had been perhaps one hundred of them, hardly a number to be frightened of, and a few brightly colored banners. The police had dispersed them quickly, but their chants remained stuck in his head, that primal, guttural music that, thanks to some lucky gust of wind, had managed to carry up to his open office window. Some of them had thrown eggs—a very immature response in his opinion; as if he were the teacher that everyone hated in middle school—but some of them had had good arms. After the crowds had cleared they brought in an emergency team of window-washers who had scrubbed the place spotless, he had made sure of that himself.

There was not to be a blemish on the masterpiece that he had created. It was more enduring than diamonds, stronger than steel, better than any tombstone or obituary at retelling his past achievements, and more majestic than any pharaoh's pyramid. And what did a pharaoh do when the rabble raised their voices? He crushed them before a little social discontent escalated into an unstoppable conflagration.

"These people don't understand, my job is to maintain order." He said to his reflection, strong and square in the pane of glass.

"And who's order would that be, exactly?" At the unexpected voice, he felt like he could have easily jumped out of his skin—if he had been the kind of person do such things. That voice—it was neither rough nor smooth, but thick and glossy, like oily layers of varnish on wood. Each syllable seemed to slide into the other, and yet there was grit in every word, as if the voice of the speaker had been scrubbed with gravel.

"Who's there?" He reached for the panic button conveniently hidden under the top surface of his desk, but as he spun around he saw that there was no need. He was faced with a completely—and now eerily—empty office. He shook his head furiously. It was late, he was alone, his mind was apt to wander. And he hadn't been afraid of the dark since he was a child.

Nevertheless, as he turned again to the window, he was overcome with the pestering thought that he was turning his back on something that had the potential to be very dangerous. Nagging chills swept down his skin like harsh winter winds, telling him softy but strongly, very strongly, not to close his eyes too abruptly on this matter.

Impossible. This was foolishness, superstition. Along with the billions of dollars devoted to everything from wall décor to window panes, the KaibaCorp building had the most state-of-the-art security systems that money could buy. There was simply no way that anyone could be there, he refused to accept even the glimmer of the possibility. Fiercely cracking his knuckles, he looked himself squarely in the reflective pane of glass.

And saw that he wasn't alone.

Floating like fog in the early morning, there was very clearly another figure behind him, tall, transparent, and infused with a certain kind of hard and icy fury that he had only ever seen in one other person. Himself.

"Who…who are you?!" He spun around again, clutching at his chest and with eyes steaming. But the instant his eyes met the opposite wall, the room was again completely empty. "Show yourself!" He balled his hands into tight fists and glared accusingly about the room, as if expecting the furniture to confess to trying to play tricks on him. Despite the illusion of his solitude, the air seemed to swim and simmer with whispers and darkness. Everything seemed heavy, to cling to him with a kind of dreary, sticky energy that he couldn't shake off. And everything seemed alive to him, to be watching and listening intently to see how everything was going to play out.

"Such fear, such…paranoia. Nothing has changed at all, has it, Akhenaden?" The question seemed to rise out of the walls, secrete from the furniture, completely engulf him. "No, forgive me—there is one difference." Icy whispers that cut and stung like salt surrounded him, infiltrating his ears with their poisonous and bitter inflections. "Now you have the blood of two ages on your hands."

He tried to speak, to yell, but his voice slipped through his fingers and fell lifelessly to the floor. All he could do was cough, gag, claw at his throat like a giant, wild cat sinking its claws into its prey.

"I….I d-don't know…w-what you're…t-talking about. You're not even r-real!"

The room seemed to chuckle at him, to contract and expand around him, to sink around his feet like quicksand. "Not real? I assure you, Mr. Kaiba, I am only more real than the last time you saw me. All you have to do is turn around."

Trembling, and silently repeating to himself that this was all only some awful dream that he was destined to wake up from, he slowly, deliberately, turned back to face the window. "I've just fallen asleep at the desk. Fell asleep at my desk. I will wake up from this. I _will_ wake up." He clung to his words like a man lost at sea holding desperately onto a piece of driftwood, not knowing whether it would help, but that it was certainly better than being entirely alone and hopeless.

"Funny how easily your resolution crumbles when faced with something that you can't just…explain away," more laughter, gurgling like molten metal. "But then again, there is a _very_ reasonable explanation, when you really _think_ about it. Look into the mirror, Gozaburo. Look and see what you've done!"

"I don't follow orders. Not from you, not from people who are too cowardly to properly show their face!"

There was more chuckling, and a soft, gentle sigh. "You heard him, everyone. It's time we gave Mr. Kaiba something to believe in."

Like a wild frenzy of fireworks, fiery images exploded before him. Body after body materialized out of the murky darkness, burning the air. He could see row after row of eyes reflected in the window, glowing ferociously like hot coals. Their looks—proud, bitter, and tragically broken—tore him apart like acid rain. As a mob they were frightening, but as individuals they were horrifying. Each face grotesquely deformed, blood splattered, shattered. Some were missing limbs, the limbs of others were only barely or brokeningly attached to their owners and hanging limply at their sides.

Despite the social graces that benefited him so well in the board room, Gozaburo had always been lacking in a certain social sensibility that, even under the veneer he worked so well to construct, inelegantly exposed the flaws in its foundation when confronted with someone Gozaburo deemed to be 'sub-par.' Be it a client in a wheelchair, or the blank and unconventional stare of someone who couldn't truly see, the sight of some deformity, some imperfection, had always filled him with a sense of unease, as if the fabrics of his soul had grown dirty and wrinkled.

And now, now there were hundreds—perhaps thousands—of them packed tight. They were a multitude of broken toys, discarded rags, the wild, the uncivilized, the weak. And they each carried his death in their eyes. And at the fore was a man—scarcely more than a child—with a crooked smile and battered face crowned by disheveled wild white hair. He looked more animal than human, especially when barring that untamed, ecstatic grin of one who couldn't exact more precise vengeance if he had been using an exact-o knife.

Oddly dressed, he leered menacingly forward, barring his wicked, toothy grin like a lethal weapon. He sighed heavily and gestured elegantly to the assembled crowd behind him. "You see, Akhenaden, how no matter how much things change, the more they remain—sadly—the same. To think that me, in my ignorance, for a moment I believed that there might have been some hope for you, some hope for _atonement_." He shook his head, slowly, sadly. "But alas, I can see now there is no changing you, your soul possess a disease that surpasses the trials of time."

"This—this can't be right!" Gozaburo croaked through chattering teeth. "You've got the wrong man!" He made to turn his head away from the window, but was immediately halted by a violent gesture from the man.

"You stay where you are!" He demanded. And there was something in his voice—something so rough, so lethal—that Gozaburo felt compelled to obey him. He came closer, prowled around Gozabura with heavy deliberation, as if waiting for the moment to launch his most potent attack. "Now, do you honestly believe that, Akhenaden? You think this is all some silly cosmic accident? That poor, innocent, and _undefended_ Gozaburo Kaiba has inexplicably been thrown into a situation that he has no control over—that he did not bring on himself? That the gods have pitted him against an adversary that he never asked for, that they have thrown a punishment onto him that he didn't deserve? Well, if that were really the case, Mr. Kaiba, the two of us could form a support group. But now, unfortunately the truth is always more painful, isn't it? To think yourself responsible for death, for destruction, for unimaginable horrors that you will never experience yourself, we would all like to think ourselves better than that. It's a painful idea—I grant you that one small concession.

"But at the same time I laugh, I laugh at you, Akhenaden. And why? For thinking that you could run, that you could forget, that you could hide yourself away and that no one would ever be able to find you. Your body, your name, the place you call your home, they have all changed, but your soul, your _soul_ Akhenaden, is unchanged. Did you think we wouldn't be able to see through your façade? Did you honestly believe that—with a little scrutiny—these things wouldn't _just fall away_?"

Disgusted by the weakness in his voice, Gozaburo implored the nightmarish stranger with all the fortitude that he could muster, but it was like trying to construct a beautiful vase out of shards of broken glass. "I have no idea what you're talking about! I swear to God—"

He was interrupted by a fierce, stabbing laugh. "Hah! Do you hear that, everyone? He's going to _swear_ it! Swear to his God that he's ignorant, that he's innocent! He's going to bare his soul to the tides time, and swear that he's not responsible for all the destruction—all the horror—that he has wrought!"

Laughter erupted in the crowd. Each voice, each ghostly inflection of noise, was so unbearably close, so tangible, that he could almost hear his own heartbeat pulsing through it, could almost feel their cruel laughter like a blade pressed against his throat.

"If you don't see it, Gozaburo," the stranger purred as he came closer and closer, breathing heavily into his ear and letting his hands wander dangerously close to Gozaburo's square shoulders, "I suggest you look closer!"

The glass, once so solid, seemed to turn to molten liquid before his eyes. His own image swam before him, his own face becoming distorted and ambiguous. And yet the figures in the background remained perfectly clear. They stood tall and proud like deadly statutes. Some were in strange dress, foreign and antiquated like that of the white-haired man, others looked more modern in appearance, but all glared down at him with the same eternal ferocity as his features blurred and took on the appearance of a Picasso painting.

One by one his features regained their clarity, but the more human his face became the less he was able to recognize it. His hair was long, dry, and clinging to the last remnants of color like a piece of dying straw. His face was gaunt, skin wrinkly and loose. His face was longer, narrow, and bent into foreign shapes. And his left eye throbbed uncontrollably. He gasped and grabbed at the socket, only to recoil in horror as he felt a lump of solid gold blossom there like a flower uncurling to the first rays of the morning light.

And the laughing grew louder, tearing at him and making every atom in his body vibrate to its unearthly frequency. He felt a groan come not from his throat, but out of every pore in his skin as he stumbled, fell to the ground as his face nearly exploded in agony.

"Please—Please leave! I beg you, make it stop!"

"Painful to realize your true identity, is in not, Akhenaden? Painful to realize that you are not safe, that there are people who can bring you to your knees, even after all these years. Yes, so little has changed…so little indeed. You still can't allow anyone to see you for how you really are..."

For a moment there was blissful silence and the pain lessened. Gozaburo delicately peeked up from where he had fallen on the floor, and looking around, saw nothing. For all the noise, all the pain, all the panic, he was completely alone. He rose carefully to his feet, tremulously looking over his shoulder several times before daring to meet his own reflection in the window pane.

He saw himself, cool, stable, well-constructed, confident. He saw neat right angles, straight lines, seventy stories of glass and iron and concrete. He saw a striking skyline and the best security system that money could buy.

And on the inside he could hear, like a bomb that ticks deceptively softly before resulting in a massive explosion, "and the more these things change, the more they remain exactly the same…"


	3. Thief Ryou, Kisara

Our Lady Peace- Thief

* * *

-I-

It was either floating or falling—or perhaps he wasn't moving at all. He felt like he had been submerged in deep, cool water that dulled his senses and blurred his mind. Everything felt flat, as if all the trials and tribulations of life had gradually been sanded down, leaving the landscape of his life scattered with a thick layer of sawdust.

And there was a strange emptiness, as if he was picking up some deceptively light object that he had thought he would be unable to lift. He searched wildly, looking for the missing weight, but was unable to change anything.

Was he dreaming? But no—this was too light to be a dream, too calm, too quiet. Years of dreaming of fires and monsters and magic had taught him to believe that dreams of anything else were impossible. This had to be something else, something that he had never experienced before.

And then there was a rushing feeling and everything was pulled away. He opened his eyes—he had eyes now—and saw a tiled ceiling, bright, burning lines, smeared faces whose only discernable feature was eternal concern. He heard their voices. They were high-pitched, panicked. Without having to really hear them, to understand the individual words, he knew what they meant. They had no hope for him; they were merely waiting, standing on the sidelines with crossed fingers as they watched the battle rage inside him.

That sensation would only last a moment, and then he was back. Back in the world where he had no skin—because the air, the eternity—was his only shell. Where there was no weight, no thought, only sweeping plains and soft, silky blankets of time. There was nothing but him. He felt like he had been cut open, like he had splattered on the floor and shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. And now all that he had tried to contain, to keep neatly stacked and meticulously organized in the manila folders and large, gray filing cabinets of his mind had exploded across the floor, started to climb the walls, clung to the ceiling like bats.

In a wild flurry, half-forgotten memories came streaming back, liquefying and blending themselves into a sloppy mélange of past and present. There were things he had tried to forget, things that he had, and, in a small, dusty pile in the far corner of his mind, he found memories that he was certain were not his own. He recoiled from them on instinct; delving too deep into them gave him the same intrusive feeling of reading a stranger's diary. However, the more he turned his back on these strange discoveries, the more they fought their way forward, begging for his attention.

And there was one that he simply could not ignore. It was lighter than the others, sweet and painfully smooth. It glowed like an inside-out sun, soft, warm, and unimaginably dangerous. He didn't want to touch it, didn't want to come near to its shinning surface, but just as the walls between his mind and body seemed to have dissolved, so too did those between his responsible reactions and reckless desires.

He delicately pulled on the end of it, and slowly and suddenly the delicate layers of suppression and the corrosion of time vanished. What remained were pure light, joy, dusty happiness, and harsh, sandy exultation. What remained was Egypt, the way he had always wanted it to stay.

He was sand, he was rich blue sky and thick transparent water. He was damp rocks and sticky layers of sand that clung like a second layer of skin. He was heavy, humid breezes, he was the sky breaking open at dawn. And so was she.

He have didn't see her—at least not in the conventional sense—to know what she looked like. Her image had long ago been imprinted on his soul like a sunburn that would never heal. She was pure beauty, a white-washed purity that he had never been able to find again. She was flowing white hair, long thin limbs, and eyes that overflowed with emotion. She was graceful concern as her cool, soft fingers caressed his dirty cheeks, as her eyes bent up like crumpled tin foil when she was worried. She was tightly pursed lips and doubt and worry as she asked him, "Bakura, what went wrong?"

To that he had no answer. Had it been when she had splattered across the windshield of that man's car like a pitiful insect? Or the first time he had strung that heavy gold pendant around his neck, gently cradling it against his skin as if it was something to be revered, something holy? Maybe it was the first time he had woken up cold and alone on the kitchen floor in clothes he couldn't remember buying. But those answers never satisfied her, she always insisted that he wasn't looking far back enough, that there was something he wasn't seeing.

He had no idea what it could be.

"Why do you call me that?" She would always ask him. "Don't you remember me?"

"Of course I remember! How could I ever forget you?"

"Then why don't you call me by my name?" He could feel her scowl like a cold wind—temperamental and unforgiving.

"Because that is your name…"

Whenever he said that it made her cry.

-II-

"Bakura! Bakura! Are you there?" Their voices were so heavy, so hard. It felt like they were hurling bricks at him when they spoke.

He could feel his blood pounding through his veins, running through him as if it were trying to tear him apart. He could feel the air struggling into his crumpled, leathery lungs. There was a certain strain in having to think in words. Just by being awake for these brief and hazy moments, his emotions were boxed into neat and proper characters when he wanted nothing more than for them to run wild and free. And he felt his skin, sucking off him like a leech and trapping him inside a prison that he hadn't even known had existed until he lived one moment without it.

He grew to hate being awake.

-III-

"Why couldn't we have always stayed like this, Bakura?" She would ask him, her tone wistful and sweet as flower nectar. "Why did everything have to fall apart? We used to be so happy together, but…it never stayed that way."

He never had an explanation for her. He would only listen, watch her as the dappled sunlight danced across her hair. There were times when he thought that his silence infuriated her, but he never knew what to say.

With a shrug of the shoulders and hopeless sigh he would sit next to her and watch the sun rise for the fifth time that day. Each one was slightly different, but they always remained exactly the same.

-IV-

The worst was when she brought up things that he was certain had never happened. Running barefoot through the desert, stealing fruit from the neighbor's baskets, playing tricks on the guards who came almost daily to inspect their homes—he couldn't recall any of them with any conviction or emotion. Listening to her stories, told with the fervor and brilliance of rich oil paints and syrupy stained glass, he felt like they must have been living separate lives. The only things he remembered were the fire and the sirens, the trip to the hospital, clenching her hand the entire way. She never wanted to talk about the fire.

"Why did you even come?" She asked. "Why bother if you don't even care about anything? But of course, you never cared about anything except your wild fantasies and foolish schemes for vengeance. You ran so far away from reality…I could never find you! Half the time—it was like you weren't even human! You weren't yourself…you weren't anyone."

"I never wanted to get revenge on anyone…"

She laughed, sharp and pure like chiming glass. "Is that what you say? Then why the magic? Why the gold and the spirits and the armies? And you think I'm the one imagining things?"

"I really don't know what you mean. Amané, those things never happened…"

"I told you not to call me that! Bakura, I don't know what to think of you. I thought that I had lost you before, but now it's like you're an entirely different person…"

And she would leave him alone, lost in the wind and the tides of his changing thoughts.

-V-

His condition was improving. He could feel it in the strengthening of his pulse. He could feel it as his skin put itself back together. He could see it as the world swam back into focus and the faces that greeted him were calm and cool, even cautiously optimistic.

He could sense it as his memories returned to their proper places. They folded in their corners, wiped themselves clean, and retreated back to where he kept them for safekeeping, though he was never able to directly touch or experience them.

The day before he was officially declared 'recovered,' Amané wrapped herself back into her silky egg shell, modestly hid herself under dusty layers of age and forgetfulness.

The day he was finally released from the confines of his hospital bed, the voice that narrated his thoughts returned dark and deep as night air, it seamlessly slunk back into his head as if it had never been gone.

Years later, he could still remember the arrogant, pained chuckle and the way it had shot icy sparks down his spine. And he could remember, with the same intensity of shock and confusion each time, as the spirit of the ring had chided him upon his return.

"You nosy fool." A long angry pause, and then a gradual and unintentional lessening of tension, like a balloon grudgingly releasing the last of its air. "Her name was Kisara."

* * *

Apparently I like tricking Ryou into thinking that every white-haired person he encounters is Amané. Now I just need to write a story where he meets Pegasus XD


	4. Mama Who Bore Me Isis

Lea Michele- Mama Who Bore Me (Spring Awakening original cast recording)

There was a heavy click as the door swung shut behind him. After a few moments the sound of his entourage departing scraped the vacant air, roaring like distant thunder. A hollow silence wafted through the room—the dead-looking, untouchable exhibits neatly packed in their glass cases, the pristinely polished tile floors, the sterile white walls, and her.

For others, Domino Museum might have held a strange glamour—the possibility of uncovering the secrets of unknown worlds, seeing through the eyes of the dead. The mysteries drew people in, begging them to place themselves in a larger context, to rethink the importance of their own lives. For Isis, the museum held no such mythical magnetism. She had been born and raised in a total self-immersion, unquestionably authentic ancient history museum, and the only thing that puzzled her when she wandered the halls of Domino Museum was not the ancient wisdom but the fact that everything was kept locked up in high-sensitivity glass and under near-constant supervision.

Ancient Egyptian plates and bowls: the placard under the case said they were worth millions, and they looked exactly the same as the sets of dishes she hadn't thought twice about breaking as a child. Under the gentle scrutiny of dim museum lighting were large stretches of painted and embossed stone that could have been easily removed from her childhood bedroom. Scholars employed by the museum made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year painstakingly translating a language she had practically known since birth.

'I should be in one of these glass cases…' she mused as she wandered the empty corridors. 'I wonder how much I would fetch at auction?' She let her fingers carelessly trail along the sparkling glass, leaving behind the heavy smudges of her fingerprints like smog infringing on a clear sky. In her mind's eye she could envision it perfectly: Sitting delicately on a pedestal as the paddles shot up, the auctioneer's voice becoming increasingly excited as the price rose higher and higher…

She stopped and leaned against the wall, the imposing tablet from the pharaoh's tomb encompassing her vision. For years that stone had sat in Egypt, carefully preserved in climate-sensitive chambers and never seeing the light of day. It had been worth nothing more than the time of energy than the people charged with maintaining it. And now, after undergoing no visible physical transformation, merely shipped across a sea and hung on a wall, it had instantly been restored to its proper importance, its proper place in the incomprehensible game of destiny.

In a wild wave of desire, she longed to run her fingers across its rough, crumbling surface. She hovered like a ghost, mere millimeters from its sculpted surface, imagining that they breathed the same air and shared a similar heartbeat.

She could touch it, lay her palm upon it, and no one would ever know.

And yet, she couldn't bear to touch it, to see its centuries-old dust caked on her fingers. To touch it would be to acknowledge that it was real—it would be like touching a fairy or a unicorn—physical confirmation that she wasn't wandering the corridors of a fantastical dream land. The idea was both too horrific and too entrancing to even consider.

Her fingers still stung from where he had snatched the card away—lacking in common courtesy, that one was. Obelisk the Tormenter, to them both it was everything that they ever needed. It was his chance to reclaim his international throne, to see the world bow to his precisely-polished, leather clad feet. But she couldn't help but smile wryly when she thought of the flames that had ignited in his eyes when he had taken it from her. Because, no matter how much he thought it was worth, to her it was priceless.

That card was the eyes of her little brother when he had begged her to tell him a story about ancient Egypt. It was the beauty of the rituals that she used to believe in. It was the power her last name still instilled on the locals, though few—if any—remembered why. That card was her one chance to see everything that had been turned sideways be put right-side up. It was her chance to reel in her wayward brother like she could nothing else. And she had held it in her hands, not fully realizing how important it really was until it had been imprudently snatched from her.

Without realizing it, or without caring to stop it, she inched progressively closer to the imposing glass that sealed the pharaoh's stone away from the rest of the world. It was an innocent artifact, dragged from the shadows of the past and hung before the gapping, glaring eyes of the present. It wore its vulnerability like the pharaohs wore their jewels because it was the only thing it could give. The only thing it had left.

She watched as her reflection swirled like a whirlpool in the glass, transfixed by her own revolving image. She saw her eyes turn a deceptively familiar shade of pale lavender, a color that light and goodness seemed to emanate from. The glass glowed in a thousand different colors. It could be the soft summer sky, sweet sandy beaches, or those warm, iridescent eyes that always made her feel like something was blooming inside her.

She didn't realize how close the palm of her hand came to the pane of glass. She knew only that she wanted to touch it as those eyes had touched her. The light that reflected off the pane of glass consumed her, while the outside world unraveled around her. The walls were dark, the corners of the rooms where the shadows pooled threatened to consume her if she wasn't careful. The tiles of the floor gleamed like sharply polished teeth, and the ceiling loomed down on her like a condescending glower. But she clung onto the glass, pushing harder and harder at the one thing that had some semblance of familiarity.

If only he had never left. If only he had never discovered motorcycles whose engines sounded like death, heavy gold blades that felt like freedom and tasted like glory. If only he hadn't longed so strongly for the wind and the golden rays of sunshine. If only he had discovered liberation before no one had taught it to him. If only there had never been a pharaoh at all.

She melted to the ground like a waterfall, feeling like a puzzle whose pieces had been scattered across the continents, out of reach and out of sight. She had felt a compulsion, for as long as she could remember, to put all the pieces back together. And what had she done instead—let them all slip through her fingers like tiny grains of sand and watched without blinking an eye as they were scattered by the winds.

She felt her vision darken as shadows in the form of perfectly carved eyes and elaborate inscriptions speckled her sight like an infection. But she refused to let her fingers part from the fleshy glass that separated her from the stone, from all the other children her age, from the anger in her brother that she could never understand, from the people who walked with high heads—knowing that their mistakes were inconsequential and destiny was unimportant—that separated her from her brother now, that separated her from having any hope of being able to solve any of it by herself.

The next morning, the early-morning janitorial staff at the Domino Museum was surprised to see the floor of the ancient Egyptian exhibit scattered with shards of broken glass that glittered in the early morning light like thousands of tiny, sun-splattered stars. They swept the pieces up, jumbled their order beyond all recognition or repair. Had they had the time or the patience, they would have seen that the pieces, when properly assembled, formed a neat and coherent whole, despite how scattered the individual shards had fallen.

I think this my least favorite one so far, it just seems so blunt :/ Not to mention that the chapters are getting increasingly shorter XD


	5. How to Save a Life Ryou, Marik

The Fray- How to Save a Life

* * *

The silence wasn't becoming any easier to tolerate. It hung thick and sharp in the air like a heavy stone that was impossible to lift and heave away. Marik always tried to avert his eyes when he caught him starring up at him, waiting for a reply. Even in the still semi-darkness he could see them stinging with expectancy, with a kind of vulnerable, bruised, and battered anticipation that made him incredibly uncomfortable.

"I don't know." His voice was gray and thin; it sounded like falling down.

He turned away in a putrid mix of guilt and disgust as he saw Ryou shiver silently on the floor, as if the chill of his response had physically robbed him of something that he had been trying impossibly hard to protect. Heavily-lidded eyes sliding across the silky shadows that darted like children across the walls and ceiling, he shook his head softly.

"No, you must know. You—you must be able to help me!"

Why did he have to make it so difficult?

Marik gently released a feathery sigh as he meticulously retraced his steps, wondering with dreary dissolution how he could have so carelessly fallen into this position, how he could have gone from free agent, an entirely independent man, to delicately trying to keep Ryou's frail and fragile life from shattering in his shaking, clumsy fingers. That is, if he could even save his own.

He couldn't figure it out. It had been a subtle but rapid transformation, catching him out in the cold of frantic ambiguity like a sudden rainfall that he had convinced himself would never come.

It had began just as he was about to fade into sleep. The saturated, sloppily seeping sun was just closing its eyes to the scorching Egyptian sand, its honey-soaked hues slowly streaming from the sky like subtle spiraling clouds of invisible fog. A faint shadow of coppery brilliance still hung uneasily in the air, but with every passing moment it diminished more and more into the inky violet arms of nightfall.

He had heard stumbling outside his doorway, and his lopsided, stumbling silhouette materialized in the doorway. He was an unlikely pilgrim, unstable on his own feet, thrashing about wildly, as if he wasn't used to relying on his own two legs to carry him. Fierce, silver panic clawed at the edges of his eyes, but Ryou remained silent and stumbling, leaning heavily on the doorframe until Marik, thoroughly surprised and slightly unnerved by his sudden appearance, had allowed him to enter.

For a moment condensed, magnetic silence resounded between them, hungrily lashing at Ryou's thoughts with acidic potency before they managed to creep out as timid, flickering little words. But his eyes drew Marik into their sparkling, celestial orbit and refused to relinquish him. Even in the descending darkness they shimmered with silky islands of helpless naivety that floated tremulously in an uncharted sea of bitterness, confusion, and engulfing despair.

Just looking at him, feeling the energy from those glassy orbs piercing his skin like the sun, Marik felt that, perhaps for that single caged, iron-clad moment, they read each other thoughts and feelings like glowing neon signs.

And then he spoke.

"I need to know that it gets better."

For a moment Marik merely let the echo of his words drift through the thick, fleshy air. He focused more on the gaps between his words, the thoughts that he chose not to say. He couldn't pretend that he didn't know. He remembered the screaming, fragmented night himself—the first night in any tangible memory that he had spent entirely _alone_. Looking at Ryou now, so near to the point of crumbling that his skin was practically peeling, he was dragged back to that same night spend scratching at the walls and jumping at the distant ruffle of the wind.

He was about to speak, to say what he had no idea, when Ryou's voice cut through his memories like a sudden obstacle on a dark road.

"I didn't mean to intrude on you like this, but it's something that Yuugi wouldn't really understand. I don't think he had the same problem that I, that _we_ did." He laughed a soft series of silver chimes. "Maybe I just never understood him, but I felt that…maybe you would know better how to help me."

"How can I help you?"

Ryou refused to meet his eyes, but his eyes were transfixed by his silhouette etched across the wall in a deep, humid bronze across the cool stone. "The same way you helped yourself." His words were placid, almost transparent, and seemed to amass in a wiry shell that threatened to encompass him. "Because you did, didn't you? You're not the same person that you were when _he_ was still there, are you? And everyone knows it?"

"I'd like to think so."

"How can I make them see it in me? When they talk to me or call my name, how will they know it's not really him, just come back again? He fooled them so many times, how will they even be able to tell the difference anymore? Will I?"

"Ryou," Marik savored the sacred sound of the name as it spilled over his lips like a bubbling waterfall. "You're not like him, anyone could see that. You're a better person than he could ever dream of being."

Ryou shook his head as if trying to rid himself of a bad dream, and for the first time he let lose the full power of his searing, stabbing eyes on Marik's unsuspecting conscience. They burned with raw vulnerability, took him back to the time he was nearly blinded by his first sight of the sun.

"That's exactly the problem." He voice sank into low, feathery whispers. "I used to think that, too. The thing that kept me sane was knowing that I would never be like him, that there was always some tiny part of me that he could never reach. But he had a way of breaking down all the barriers I put up. He took my friends, my memories; he stole my name. He had no sense of privacy. But—but what made me think that I was so much better than him, after all? Just because I had never stolen or anything really bad like that—it didn't mean that I had never thought about it, that I hadn't for a single moment thought myself capable.

"There was no point in trying to put up the walls between me and him, I don't think. There were times when I thought that we weren't so different, when you got to the heart of it…" He shut is head and turned forcibly away, so that Marik was forced to study the deliberate curves of his profile it the last snatches of the evening light.

Recovering quickly from the dazzling thrill of hearing so many words rush liberally from Ryou's usually neatly buttoned lips, Marik sprung into action. He faced Ryou directly, as unswervingly as he dared, drinking in every facet of his face and wondering in the most fleeting, distant corners of his mind if he could ever garner the courage to touch him. "Listen, Ryou, you are nothing like him. I can—I can see it right now. Do you honestly believe that the spirit of the Ring would _ever_ come to anyone looking for _advice_?"

"No, I suppose not…"

"So doesn't that mean something?"

"It does…but it's not enough. I need to know, I need to see that I'm different. There were times—there were times when, I don't know, maybe something bad happened to me some day or something, and I would think such horrible things and I would be so _angry_. I hated being so mad at everyone all the time…"

"And you think that was his influence on you?"

"I don't know!" Splintering flashes of lightning seemed to emanate from his skin as he spoke, each gesture and expression becoming increasingly fragmented. He looked close to shattering. "I blamed it on him, I know I did. Everything that went wrong was always his fault. But then…then I start to think that it was me all along. That's how everyone is going to see it. They'll say that they understand, but I don't think that's true. How can they see me any other way, after all the things I did? How could they ever _believe_ in me? But they believe in you, now anyway…"

He studied Marik's face like a map, laboriously reading its curves for any sign of salvation.

"Ryou, I've felt the same way, believe me. It would destroy me to always dwell on the events of the past. But you can't let those experiences _define_ you. Above all, you have to remember that it wasn't _you_. We've faced something extraordinary, and it was hard, but we'll be stronger for it. _You'll_ be stronger. I mean," a tiny tremor crashed across his shoulders "there are horrible scars on my past that I can never erase completely. Sometimes I wish that I could, sometimes I wish that I could just start my life over so that I could do everything right. But I can't do that, Ryou. I know you've had dark hours, and I have, too. But with my sister and my friends, I've realized—"

"Realized? What could you have realized? That there's some tidy solution to everything? It wasn't me—of course it was me! It was me the whole time! Maybe not my whole mind, but it was always me. _I let it happen_."

"You didn't _let_ it happen."

"_I_ let it happen. And so did you. You can't just run away from that."

With Ryou's words the clouds overtook the moon, which had penetrated the wide expanse of sky at some point during their conversation. Their sharp glinting silhouettes were eaten by the gloom, leaving only faint, murky shadows where they had once stood.

And so the night trudged on, their words echoing against the sky like terrible, discordant music that made Marik's ears fell charred and bitter. Their voices swirled across the walls and festered in the cracks in the ceiling, refusing to leave either in peace even in their brief moments of consoling, hallowed silence.

Gradually, the vivid passion in their voices evaporated into the night, replaced by gray murmurs and empty ripples of noise. The sweet, strawberry blue sunshine began to lick the walls and pool in airy puddles on the floor. It lapped at Ryou's cheeks as he lay on the floor, resisting sleep steadfastly with the astringent determination of a vigilante. Over and over his smooth, melodious words spilled from his throat in questions that Marik could scarcely understand, let alone answer.

"What I am a supposed to be now?" he wondered listlessly. Marik hated the reverence that blossomed in his eyes whenever they met from across the floor. It reeked of an ignorant adoration that he felt himself very far from deserving.

"I don't know." He sighed, watching his fingers tangle and snarl among the chaos of his bed sheets.

"No, you must know. You—you must be able to help me!"

"And what made you thing that I had all the answers?"

Ryou slowly gathered himself onto his knees, kneeled at Marik's feet. "Because you made it. People trust you now, they're not afraid of you like they are of me. You're so strong—so _right_."

Marik looked impossibly tall from Ryou's perspective, perched on his bed like a king surveying his empire, the sun igniting behind his wild wreath of golden hair. Everything he touched seemed to burst into life.

"Ah, Ryou, you have no idea," he chuckled softly. "Come here." He gently patted the spot next to him on his bed. "You need to sleep, you look exhausted."

Ryou shook his end but complied, his head nearly collapsing on Marik's shoulder the instant he sat down. Through words heavily smudged by fatigue, he mumbled, "I can't sleep…if I don't know…"

"Don't worry, Ryou," Marik whispered silkily as his hand caressed Ryou's pale forehead, brushing the hair from his eyes. "We'll figure it all out—eventually."

As heavy and as limp as they felt, Ryou struggled to keep his eyes open. For a moment the air burned like melting iron and it felt like all the air in the atmosphere had already been exhausted and neither of them could force themselves to turn away and somewhere, billions of miles away, the sun shone brighter between them, enshrining them in its magnanimous embrace.


	6. Pinball Wizard Seto, Yuugi

The Who- Pinball Wizard

* * *

The more prevalent the talk became, the harder it became for the listeners to pick the bits of reality from the onslaught of fiction. His name was uttered in secret, and with reverence, among those who truly grasped the enormity of his accomplishments. One fatal flicker from his simmering eyes was known to cause blindness in the impure, to leave a cold vein of fear in their hearts that could never be warmed or soothed away. His footsteps were echoes of the god's names. The world was re-created every day in his image, and it existed solely in the space between his fingers.

He was Seto Kaiba, and he was the greatest pinball player that the universe would ever see.

Each time he entered the arcade, patent leather shoes tapping off the time as if he had created it himself, silhouette carving out the shadows, light reverberating off him, a hush descended over the crowd as if noise had simply forgotten how to exist. All eyes turned to him; he pulled them in on his little finger and spun them lazily around his head like a golden yoyo. He loved the attention, but he would never let them see it.

His movements created new and unknown fields of gravity as he weaved through a neon sea of sticky game consoles with the ancient and violent grace of a stoic soldier set on glaring the life out of his enemies. Every inch of him was cool, smooth, flowing, and rejected the earth as something incurably inferior to what he felt he ought to be. The children worshipped him, carved his initials into their foreheads and lived in constant, thrilling, fear of his unpredictable wrath. The Arcade Elders, those who had witnessed the erection of the first Pac Man pixels from the drivel and dirt of the previously gameless world, every day reveled in their golden gold luck, that they, unworthy entities that they were, should be fortunate enough to see this enchanted creature walk the earth and breathe among them.

Whispers followed him like the silky ruffles of evening shadows. They said that one touch from his long, delicate fingers could turn garbage to gold. He could heal the sick, pluck money from the air, became invisible after the onslaught of nightfall, would never die, didn't bleed.

The rumors meant nothing to him, the people who made them even less. They were merely negative space, not worth his attention or his time. Upon entering the slimy, throbbing underworld on the Domino City Game Station, his senses took on new forms. Unnecessary distractions melted into the floor, the world lived and breathed solely to honor his very existence. He left behind his notion of what it meant to be human and soaked in the glory, if only for a few dazzling moments, of what it felt like to be God.

He had eyes only for the silver ball, darting in and out, raging across the board like a polished, perfect, silver bullet of fiery, vengeful wrath desperate to crown itself king of a soulless world. It was an eternal eye, gazing forever into Seto's own and running through the mazes of his soul. The controls were the warm, enveloping hands of a distant friend, half-forgotten lover. The bells and rings and chinks and whistles were a wistful, jerking hymn, sung in a language that only he could speak. Every movement was carelessly precise, unnecessarily elegant, and breathtakingly quick but clenchingly, unbearably slow. His movements bent time and threw it away. His focus was sharp enough to shatter glass, the waves of his concentrated, hurried, red breathing intense enough to carry satellite transmissions. He was the sun, all his admirers thoughtlessly and inescapably trapped in his addictive orbit.

The universe was not his. He was the universe. One whisper of his name, one allusion to his existence, was enough to bring the faithless to their knees and beg uselessly for pity.

And life wore on. The days built up as quickly and effortlessly as the initials "SK" climbed the score charts and eventually toppled them with youthful, dashing, and arrogant ease. Some might have hated him for his inhuman talent, but they were all too dazzled to do anything but allow him to snatch their breath away and beat out their cognitive ability as if it had been a tired old rug. He mutilated the idea of what talent was. He was not only a class by himself, he built his own university and laughed at the idea of admission.

One day everything changed. The world stopped turning, plants rejected the sun, and water began to flow uphill. He was usurped.

It happened slowly and suddenly, subtly and painfully, sharp as lightning but clung, stuck to him for days and gnawed at his bone marrow. He had sensed it the moment his feet had hit the black laminate floor. The air felt different, endued with inspiration and energy when, during his absence, it should have been saturated with the dreary and heavy hopelessness that his nonappearance tended to inspire among the mindless arcade junkies who licked the tip of his shadow and polished the air that he breathed. But not today. Things were not right, and he was determined to find out why.

Streamers of noise danced up and down the walls. They were laughing, cheering, applauding at something or some_one_ that, contrary to any rational human assumption, was not _him_. The infuriating knowledge poked and pricked at him like beams of fire, luring him deeper and deeper into the festering heart of the arcade, determined to find the source of this unsettling disturbance.

He could immediately see that there had been a massacre. The floor was littered with the tell-tale signs of carnage: the splattered intestines of popcorn bags were listlessly limp and scattered, spilled soda soiled the floor like thick streams of heady red blood, the air was tainted with the pungent odor of burning, twisted metal.

And there he was. The tyrant, the murderer, the antichrist incarnate, with his stupid flowerly head and oversized pants. He stood pleasantly in the center of the chaos, disgustingly unaware of the violent disturbance that he had haplessly and idiotically wrought in the Natural Order of Things. And he was smiling. And waving, the jerk, waving at _him_.

"Kaiba-kun!" Yuugi smiled, childishly running his hand through his hair. "What are you doing here?"

Kaiba was floored. What was he doing _here_? What was he _doing_ here? What was _he_ doing here? No matter which word he chose to italicize the question was equally revolting. That was the question Kaiba should have been hurling at him, the disrespectful little shrimp that still needed a booster seat to see the blackboard! What heretical musings had crossed his microscopic mind that he had decided to traipse in, defiling this sacred temple of recreation with his exasperatingly ungodly presence?! It was beyond belief, floating along merrily on its charming little way somewhere on the darkest fridges of the universe, commonly referred to the Area of Irrational Ideas, with such pleasant conspiracies as sleeping, having fun, and Marxist economics. And friendship. He couldn't forget friendship with Yuugi hear, practically smothering him in huge, fluffy kitten-shaped pillows of it.

"_Nothing_." He snarled icily, trying desperately to make himself look as potentially dangerous as possible.

"Bet you came to see master Yuugi at it, didn't you, mister?" a pre-pubescent and greasy-faced middle-schooler interjected. "Yuugi Motou's the best pinball player there is!"

Yuugi blushed sheepishly and gingerly brushed the flattery away, as if afraid to break it. "I'm really not that good…"

"Are you kidding? You're _epic_, man! I mean, just look, you have _all_ the high scores!" He gestured enthusiastically to the score chart which was, unbelievably, completely inundated by the beaming, sickening letters "YM."

Kaiba peered into the board, desperately mining for answers in this surreal situation, but it would have been easier to tell time in a Dali painting. The board offered no answers for its sudden and painful betrayal; it merely buzzed and flickered on like a fourth of July parade in the middle of December. Seto's head snapped incredulously between Yuugi and the board in a maddening cycle, unable and unwilling to accept the dish that destiny had served him. This was beyond possible. This was like the pope calling to say that Gozaburo had been given a first-class ticket to heaven, like getting anything less than a perfect score on a test, like kids suddenly deciding that drugs weren't cool and that they had never liked sugar that much, anyway.

"This. Isn't. Possible." Kaiba hissed out between stony, bitter teeth. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

Yuugi's face was a puzzle of confusion. He had no idea what kind of disaster he had created. It was like he had announced the discovery of particle physics in the thirteenth century and left to a bunch of rural French farmers to fill in the rest while he went out for tea. Kaiba could hear the apocalypse bells ringing with heavy metallic glory in the distance. The air stunk with Armageddon.

"Sorry Kaiba-kun…I was just playing pinball. Do you know how?"

"No."

"Wait, you look a little familiar, aren't you the guy who—" the pesky little child was trying to interrupt with more pointless commentary. Kaiba shoved him aside.

"I wouldn't waste my time on a childish diversion like this." Kaiba sneered before storming off, making sure to leave plenty of thunderclouds behind for Yuugi to wallow in as he wondered, to no one in particular, what he was doing at the arcade in the first place.

Kaiba didn't rest. Determined to cleanse himself of the unholy feeling of failure, he scoured the world from the 24 inches of his computer screen, determined to find the perfect glove to fit his immaculately groomed hand: the one game that would guarantee him success, glory, validation. After hours of tireless questing, he found his panacea: delicate series of intricately rendered monsters, entrancing spell cards, and the one that captivated him to eternity and pulled the air from his lungs: the majestic Blue Eyes White Dragon.

This was it. He was certain of it.

* * *

It's so unlike me to write something so unabashedly silly, but this song happened to come on while I was doing my homework today and I was struck with a sudden flash of inspiration. I realize that it's not exactly cannon—the original idea was just to have a description of Seto's epic pinball-playing powers—but I wanted to bring some conflict into the story to add some drama XD.


	7. No I in Threesome Yuugi, Anzu

Interpol- No I in Threesome

* * *

Yuugi knew that he couldn't keep pretending that nothing was wrong. He had known from the beginning that, eventually, a stale, dismal day would have to come when he confronted reality as it had chosen to become. He had just always gripped tightly to a golden glimmer of hope that that sun would never rise, that the pages on the calendar would stop spinning. He had hoped against all reason that the earth would keep turning and this problem would slowly fade into the dusty dark hallways of distant memory.

That didn't happen. Things had only gotten worse. His goals and expectations, his hopes and aspirations, were the things that dissolved on the wind, and the past seemed more immediate that ever.

He watched Anzu from across the dining table. Her eyes were sunken, low, detached. When she caught his gaze she smiled brightly, but Yuugi had seen too many of those warm, glowing smiles to fool himself into believing that there was any genuine emotion behind them. At least, not for him.

The problem had started early, but Yuugi hadn't seen it. How could he? In the days following Yam—Atem's—departure into the afterlife, they had all been silently shattered without really realizing it. There had been a notable dimming in their greetings, a subtle tweaking in their behavior that indicated that something had been misplaced—something valuable was missing and would never be returned. It had lasted for weeks—maybe months, he couldn't rightly remember. A dreary gray cloud had swarmed over them all, making their words bleaks and their thoughts flat and empty. There were no more worlds to save, so now they had so save themselves.

Eventually, and with effort, the storm had passed. Just as they had always promised each other, the strong, thick foundation of their friendship withstood the rampages of trying times and extraordinary experiences, and their collective sense of loss, wonder, and awe had brought them all back together like tiny drops of water returning the sea. Life would never be the same, he had known that, but he hadn't expected it to mutate into something that he was so completely unprepared for.

Despite the mending, the filling of the holes that had temporarily stood between them, Anzu seemed eternally unaffected. By everything. Almost everything. She had cried when he left their little world, cried on and off during the months that followed. She had smiled and laughed when they all recounted the most memorable times they had shared. Laughed about how they had almost lost their lives. It seemed funny now, now that they knew they would make it. But, Yuugi wondered, where had those emotions gone?

He couldn't remember the last time had seen Anzu smile—really smile. She would move her lips and bare her teeth, but Yuugi knew as intuitively as he knew to eat when he was hungry that her expressions and mannerisms were merely shadows of her former self. He knew her old smile. It had made his stomach churn and cheeks ignite in junior high—especially when she had bestowed that smile on him with the benevolence that a sun pours onto a flower. Now her face was nothing but a blank page, empty space, the silence that always seemed to engulf them, even when they were speaking.

She hadn't even cried at their own wedding. But she cried for him.

He knew because she did it with the doors locked, and he had to press his ear to the keyhole.

Yuugi had felt the first stirrings of trouble when, five months into their marriage, Anzu had accidentally set the toaster on fire. Yuugi had been surprised when she stood, petrified, watching the flames roar and snap at her, helplessly awaiting his intervention. Anzu wasn't the kind of girl to sit around waiting to be rescued by a white knight to carry her to safety. But faced with a small kitchen fire her voice went raw with screaming and her hands flailed madly like bats until Yuugi rushed in from the next room wielding the fire extinguisher.

Amid the torrents of soft, creamy clouds that cascaded from the device like falling snow, he had peered over his shoulder to look at her. Her face was masked by smoke and fear, but he could see something sharp and strong under the trembling pools of panic. She was looking, waiting, for something to materialize. For something to _change_. To change _inside of him_.

He knew that she had set the fire on purpose. He chose not to mention it.

Hints gently came to tap on him on the shoulder. Small, sneaky voices pointed out whenever something wasn't quite right, whenever the air tasted stale or the sun shone a cold, painful white. He had to ignore it.

Anzu came and cleared the plates away, the glassy clinks they made as she staked them as sweet and as hollow as her enchanting voice. Yuugi barely noticed when she spoke anymore. Her voice was faded and limp, like a creature struggling for life in an iron snare, knowing that it's only hope lies in the heroic generosity of strangers. The only time her voice had color was when she brought up the past—gently unwrapped it and laid it out for admiration like it was a priceless artifact that wasn't to be touched. When she told the stories she would do more than look at him, she would cautiously and artfully peer inside him and try to sort him out into the person that she thought he still was. Or who she thought he should still be.

Under the rapid descent of nightfall they brushed their teeth, changed their clothes, huddled under the covers as if hiding from someone very far away. With the shadows looming over him and the world as smooth and silent as if the universe had never been born, Yuugi felt the stirring of knowledge within him that he had for a long time dreaded having to confront: He could not go one with things as they were.

Aware at every moment that the darkness was listening with attentive ears and bated breath, he ran his fingers slowly around his neck, feeling the ghost of a memory where the physical thing no longer existed. It gave him a small degree of confidence, and he finally voiced the nightmares that had hounded him even in the daytime.

"Anzu," he whispered gently. "Anzu, are you awake?" There was no reply. Not even the sound of her breathing. Nevertheless, some focused, sensitive awareness that filtered through the air told him that she was still awake and listening. He continued. "I—I really don't know what to say, Anzu. We've known each other for forever. We're best friends. I've always loved you—even before I knew it myself…" he released something that was halfway between a laugh and sigh. "I just thought that that was enough. I'm really sorry, Anzu, but I'm—I'm only me. I know that me and Atem shared the same body for a long time, and I know that it changed me. It changed both of us.

"It scared me at first, and I didn't want to tell anyone because I didn't understand it. I didn't understand what was happening to me. And even now, every time I think about it I see it a little differently. I'll probably never understand completely, Anzu, I don't think that any of us really will. But there's one thing Anzu, one thing that I know for sure. No matter how close we were and how much we learned from each other…I'm not him, Anzu. I'm just me, I'm just Yuugi. No matter how much we think or believe or trick ourselves into believing otherwise, he's not going to come back, and I'm not going to become someone else. I'm one person…and there's all there is."

For a moment he watched the dust float through the air and settle on the bed sheets. He slowly turned to Anzu on the bed beside him. There were gaping holes in the darkness where the muddy light reflected off her skin, but her form was lost in a maze of starving, desperate shadows.

From across an impossible, invisible void, the kind as thin and clear as a glass window that no one sees until they run directly into it, he heard her choked and tremulous voice echo through a cavern of reserved, respectable silence.

"I know."

Her words fell like fragile fall leaves and stung like acid. Yuugi didn't know what to say. He only looked up at the shadows that lurked across the ceiling. They always seemed to be watching him, watching over them both.

Yuugi shut his eyes and prayed for morning.

* * *

Poor Anzu, Yami totally ruined her for 21st century men xD.


	8. My Sweet Prince Seto, Yami

A/N: This story takes place during season zero—after Yami defeats Seto at Duel Monsters for the first time but before the creation of Death-T.

* * *

Placebo – My Sweet Prince

* * *

It had been three days since Seto had woken up, and he hadn't slept since. The cold, deep, darkness of the night poured into him, saturated his skin until it bled. He gulped down the sharp, stabbing bitterness of the stars like a thick, delicious poison, savoring the feeling of it boiling in his veins.

Shadows scattered across the floor, waging a silent and deadly battle with the metallic beams of moonlight that drenched his bedroom through the open window. Seto watched the delicate maneuverings, the meticulous strategy, all the planning, all the time, the blood, the bullets, that would be rendered useless by morning, when the sharp points of the sun would rule the sky again, taking back what was his.

His eyes nearly fluttered shut, but he forced them open. He had forbidden himself sleep until he found an answer, until he had uncovered an explanation. His skin itched from exhaustion, every inch of him was screaming, longing for sleep and the sweet solace of dreams and fantasy. But Seto pressed on like a ship lost at sea, scanning the horizon for one faint glimmer of salvation.

He had lost. And it was killing him.

His desk was drowning in statistical printouts, textbooks, piles of playing cards that gazed listlessly up at him with empty, expecting eyes, and reams of pages covered with his frantic, disjointed writing. The weight of the past three days bore down on him heavily, filling his lungs with despair and giving his bedroom the hopeless, heavy smell of a mortuary. As the hours had dragged on, the printer's manic pace had dwindled to a slow trickle, his hand had ceased racing across the page, but his mind was still working, still retooling every option, every possibility that had wandered into the realm of his reality.

He let the thick, black figures stab his eyes, tear through them until they seeped an inhuman mixture of blood, sweat, and fruitless agony. It was a divine, ecstatic perdition, but it was better than the alternative.

Now, when he shut his eyes, he didn't see darkness. Or rather, he didn't see _just_ darkness. He saw blossoming bouquets of shimmering ruby, swirling spirals of ebony, broken shards of gold that pierced him like needles. He saw _him_, but it was so much more than seeing. Just beyond the delicate fluttering of his eyelashes, Seto could feel his breath, hear his low, melodious voice that scraped the skin off his bones and spun it into silk. With the smallest, most timid of gestures, Seto could feel his skin burning as he reached out, just daring to touch the phantom that haunted his imagination. It was evidence that he was real, if only a little.

Letting a smoky, gray sigh escape his lips, Seto's head gracelessly hit the stacks of papers that littered his desk, but he refused to let his eyes shut. His vision swerved and circled, became distorted and played out scenes that he was sure had never happened, but he held them tirelessly open with the final fragments of his dignity. It would be his final—and only—victory, to not surrender to the wild rampages of his memory.

Breathing had never felt so difficult. Every breath was a suffocation—long, weary, and iron. The beating of his heart was nearly strong enough to shatter him, to pull him apart for the inside and leave him sprawled across the floor until morning, when the sun's rays would rebuild him into a caricature of the person he had been the night before. It wasn't a new sensation, Seto had often had to reconstruct his worldview during the silence of nightfall, but it never got any easier.

He didn't notice it, but his arms were shaking. His fingers prowled the surface of his desk, searching desperately for the one last card, the key that would tear him away from the painful slices of his memory. His fingers grasped frantically, but only time flowed through his fingers.

Everything ran around him in slick, silver circles. Facing him from across the table were those glowing infernos of eyes that spilled their emotions across the table but refused to relinquish their most desperate secrets. His dragon hadn't listened to him, he hadn't listened to himself, hadn't followed his own directions. He remembered the acidic smirk that dissolved his bones. He remembered the mocking, sumptuous gestures that stamped out his shadow. The cruel laugh, the yelling, the hours pouring himself into textbooks and exams, the constant sinking pit of disappointment, the first time he ever seen a missile launch.

That roaring…it started in the soles of his feet and vibrated up through his bone marrow, rattling it into pieces. Seto had grabbed at the smooth, steel hand railing, desperately trying to hold himself up. Seto had felt earthquakes before, he was used to them, but this was different. Earthquakes were fun, they were natural, they were powerful, but in a way that left his eyes wider and his heart lighter when they were over. This was entirely different. This was a shaking that pierced planets, that silenced stars, that demolished dreams. This was death.

Gozaburo had grabbed his shoulder, his thick fingers burrowing through his flesh like termites. He had laughed, and it sounded like the firing of an engine. With a careless sweep of his arm, as if he had more energy than he knew what to do with, he had drawn Seto closer to him, then kneeled down beside him.

"You see that, Seto?" He asked, having to speak loudly over the screaming of the launchers, "that's what separates us from the rest of the people in this world."

Seto was puzzled. He looked out the window but wasn't sure what he saw.

"Look there," Gozaburo gestured towards the inscription on the side of the rocket, the one that bore his new name. "You're a different kind of person, now, Seto. You're a Kaiba now. This will be your legacy."

Somewhere behind them, an assistant was counting down the seconds to liftoff. The clock struck zero, and with a deafening blast, the missile bulleted into the sky, leaving behind a ravenous cloud of dust, smoke, and debris that swallowed the air like a black hole.

The force of the blast had shook Seto off his feet, sent him cascading into one of the monitors that had been behind them. His memories of this specific incident were a vague, flimsy film that popped and toppled easily, but he clearly remembered waking up in the hospital three days later.

The doctors had said he had a concussion. Gingerly reaching up, he had felt the heavy bandages that enshrouded his skull. When he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he hadn't recognized the face he saw there. He had thought that he looked like a mummy, something long ago left for dead.

He had drifted in and out of sleep, unable to dwell in one realm for too long without it becoming excruciatingly painful. Life and death danced across his face like dappled sunlight. Sometimes he thought he saw his parents. Sometimes he found memories of a life that he had never lived—things like playing in riverbanks and holding life and death and everything in his hands and seeing people looking helplessly into his eyes, begging for mercy that only he could grant them. He heard footsteps, but he hadn't been allowed visitors in the hospital, Gozaburo had thought that it would set a bad precedent…

"Kaiba."

That volcanic, violet voice. Seto remembered that, too. That voice circulated and screamed through his bloodstream.

"No, no, no…" he mumbled blearily, tossing his arms about helplessly. "Not allowed visitors here, you gotta go away…"

Yami paused momentarily, carefully tracing Seto's silhouette in long, luscious glances that were both eager and afraid to drink in his every detail. He started again.

"Kaiba, get up." His voice was clear as water and rung across the room, delicately peeling away the heavy layers of cavernous silence that seemed to be Seto's constant companions. When his only response was a shudder and whimpering coming from the direction of Seto's desk, he stepped closer.

"Go away, he'll get mad if he catches you…" Seto tried to wave him away with a tepid fluttering of his arm, but Yami ensnared his hand mid-flight.

"Look at me." His voice was so solid, so sturdy and serene, that Seto could do nothing but obey him. When his eyes locked with Yami's he tried to snatch his hand away, but Yami only gripped it tighter. He lavishly lifted it to his eye level, meticulously examining the intricate mechanisms of his long, spidery fingers. Seto shivered as his red, simmering breath coated his skin like oil, dragging him deeper and deeper down into the darkness.

"Have you thought about what I said, Kaiba?" Seto wasn't sure if his hand moved on its own volition or if Yami was still manipulating it, but he could only watch with mountainous peaks of interest as it came close enough to Yami's face for him to feel the electricity radiating off his skin.

"Yuugi…what are you doing here?" His voice came out in dry, languished flakes, but he spoke volumes in the current between the luminosity of their eyes.

Yami smirked and shook his head ever so slightly. "No Kaiba, you know it's not Yuugi…Now, are you going to answer my question?"

Seto was certain that all the air had been squeezed out of him. He felt breathless, weightless, overcome by an earth-shattering thunder that left him shipwrecked and scalded. Wild conflagrations of pure, unadulterated nothingness roared inside him, turning his thoughts to ashes.

"Go away…" he murmured. "Get out of here! Leave!" He made a last attempt to win his hand back, but Yami's grip only tightened until he thought it would splinter his bones. Velvet ruffles of laughter spilled over his lips as he closed the final breathless millimeters of air between them, gently caressing his face with Seto's captive fingertips.

"Let me go, you freak!" Seto yelled. "I don't want any more of your stupid tricks!"

"A trick, now Kaiba, do you honestly believe that? "

"Just leave me alone."

"Evading? That's new for you, isn't it?"

"That's none of your business."

"Kaiba…don't be so cold with me. You know I'm only trying to help you…to free your mind…" With a smoldering sweep of his hand, Yami entwined his fingers in the silky ripples of Seto's hair, smirking softly as Seto tried draw his head away as slowly as if moving through maple syrup.

"Like hell you are." He barely managed to choke the words out; he felt like his throat was slowly sliding shut. "More like send me to the loony bin. Don't screw with me Yuugi, this is all some part of your crazy penalty game, isn't it?"

"If it wasn't, you would have shot me dead the moment you heard me come in." He let the moment stir and wallow between them. "But don't tell me that you're not enjoying it."

"Don't tell me what to think."

"I already am, Kaiba. I'm inside you now—"

"Tearing me apart."

"Out of necessity, Kaiba. If you could see your own heart with unadulterated eyes, you too would recognize that necessity."

"Bullshit—" His breath fluttered out in fragile, fractured feathers that drifted down gently to the floor. "You have no right to—"

"I create my own rights, Kaiba. I believe that's a philosophy you are familiar with." Tightening his grip on Seto's hair, he slowly, forcibly, titled his head back until their eyes were forced to blend and smear together. Seto felt his heart clamp shut as Yami leaned closer to him, drowning him in the incinerators of his eyes, breathing into him, stealing every little breath of him away.

"This is all some sort of dream…"

When he kissed him…that roaring, it burst out of the pores of skin and formed a puddle at his feet. Seto grabbed at his hair, his face, his hands, anything he could reach to keep from collapsing in on himself like a black hole. He could feel himself steaming everywhere their skin touched. There was a disaster rampaging inside him, a wild tumult of wind and water strong enough to pierce the core of the earth. This was death. This was being reborn. There was something denoting inside of him; he was bursting into bloom.

"You make me sick."

"Likewise."

When Seto opened his eyes, his phantom was gone. The bitter smell of charcoal and storm lingered in the air and clung to his skin. The shadows, which had been so saturating and virulent before, were now beginning to wane in the wake of the first flickers of the icy morning light. Gazing out his open window, Seto saw the first spear-like fingers of the sun as they stretched across the sky. It looked like a crown, he thought, or like his silhouette in fire.

He realized what he had been doing wrong. He had been trying to defeat Yuugi in the context of his own failure, to correct something he had done wrong. But that was not the right approach. To vanquish him, to truly annihilate him, Seto would have to destroy him on his own terms, utilizing every fragment of his warped and mutilated mind.

His room smelled like death, ripe and freshly sliced.

* * *

I love season zero Yami, he's so delightfully demented. :D Review?


End file.
